“Peace zones” are sectors where Venezuela’s security forces maintain no permanent presence and rarely enter. Vigilance by local residents is meant to replace policing in these areas, as a response to the mistrust that some communities feel towards police, who have been involved in crimes like kidnapping and extrajudicial killings.

But these designated areas have become safe havens for criminals and are often overrun by violence. In Miranda state, which contains the Caracas metro area and the largest number of peace zones, the murder rate within the peace zones was 105 per 100,000 residents in 2014, compared to 67 per 100,000 residents outside the zones, reported El Nacional.

“You can’t call these places lawless. But only in the sense that criminals are instituting their own law,” Venezuelan journalist Javier Mayorca told InSight Crime.

Since their implementation in January 2014, kidnapping gangs appear to have been using the zones to hold victims, who regularly appear in them upon release, said Mayorca.

As well as citizen vigilance, the plan was meant to include community development schemes, but was short on specific details. During the initial introductory phase, security expert Roberto Briceño expressed concerns that the zones would increase criminal impunity.

More than a year on, El Nacional reports the program has been marred by vague goals and inconsistent implementation, resulting in their current state. Despite this, Venezuela’s Interior Minister Carmen Melendez has shown no signs of abandoning the program.

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InSight Crime is a foundation
dedicated to the study of the principal threat to national and citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean: Organized Crime. We seek to deepen and inform the debate about organized crime in the Americas by providing the general public with regular reporting, analysis and investigation on the subject and on state efforts to combat it.